


A Machine, Pretending

by NervousAsexual



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Disfigurement, Torture, Trauma, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22024279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: A run-in with the Rust Devils makes Nick viscerally aware of how inhuman he really is.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34





	A Machine, Pretending

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [lymantriidae's OC and ideas](https://lymantriidae.tumblr.com/post/141392303111/i-keep-thinking-about-nick-getting-his-face-torn) with a helping of [ sillyandquiteawkward's](https://sillyandquiteawkward.tumblr.com/post/154057551451/local-synth-gets-held-up-and-harassed) art times [two.](https://sillyandquiteawkward.tumblr.com/post/167033591676/goretober-day-27-gunshotwhoever-shot-nick-is) The book referenced is [The Lonesome Bodybuilder](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781593766788) by Yukiko Motoya.

The cabin had stood empty for well over two hundred years. Not even a draft of air stirred the thick layer of dust that covered the ancient oaken table and cedar desk, and the mice had long since abandoned the stained mattress in back.

Everything was still, until it wasn't.

The only door in the place opened with such force that it rebounded off the wall beside it and sent a cloud of dust billowing up from everything near. A single figure stumbled through and barely caught itself on the edge of the table. It fell to its knees, tried to stand and fell again. It pressed its forehead to the scarred tabletop, and it sobbed.

For a moment after this the cabin was quiet again. The figure cried so softly it was barely audible, and its fingers hardly made a sound as they scratched slowly over the table.

When the sobbing gave way to an inhuman stillness the figure sank down, its weight on its legs, and it pressed one hand to a pocket. There it felt around and drew out a pre-war pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. It struck matches, one after another, on the edge of the book, only for the sparks to die. The figure sobbed again but held itself stiff, and finally a single match caught. One cigarette it raised to its lips, and the match that followed illuminated not only the cigarette but the gouged metal and torn synthetic skin of the figure holding it.

The figure huffed gently and took a drag off the cigarette.

"Really screwed the pooch this time, Valentine," it--he--muttered to himself. He raised one hand to trace the wound over his face, over the bare metal bones of his forehead, his darkened left eye, down over his nose and mouth and chin. A wince contorted his face. "Ah, shit."

Behind him the door creaked on its hinges. Outside, in the radioactive waste, nothing moved and nothing spoke. The synth was alone.

He buried his face in his hands and cried.

When he'd exhausted himself crying Valentine dragged back to the mattress and lay in the dust, massacred face turned to the ceiling. This was the only place where he felt comfortable letting his guard down; the only things that lived in the Glowing Sea were feral ghouls and radscorpions, neither of which would care what he looked like.

For some time he lay in a half-doze, running deep diagnostics and letting his body self-repair as much as it could. He finally opened his eyes hours later. His back still ached where the circuits had been broken, but he was able to lift his arm enough to turn onto his side, and he'd managed to restore a little sight in his left eye.

He lay on his side and breathed hard. It made no difference--he had no lungs that functioned as such--but it had become a habit, something almost human that calmed him and made living companions feel less embarrassed when their own bodies had a hard time keeping up.

"No point in doing that anymore," he mumbled, gingerly pressing his fingers against the exposed metal bones of his face. If he let his thoughts drift he could almost forget what had happened to him, but the truth of it was there to see.

For a moment he was back in the Fort Hagen Array, one raider carelessly cutting a strip of flesh from the base of his throat to just under his chin. And though he knew it was only going to make things worse, he heard himself ask, "This make you feel better about yourself, asshole?"

Even reliving it he winced. He always did have a smart mouth, too much so for his own good.

Slowly he got up from the mattress, leaning against the wall as he got his legs under him. Like a newborn radstag he was shaky on his feet--along with the vision in his left eye the sensors that allowed him to keep his balance were screwed up bad. He felt his way over to the window and struck another match. This one caught. He held it up to the window and wiped away some of the dust with the sleeve of his shirt, leaving behind a smear of coolant. He leaned in close to get a better look at the damage in his reflection.

They'd stripped away almost all the synthetic flesh from the center of his forehead, left a jagged patch above his nose, and then tore the entirety of his nose away, half his mouth, most of the skin over his chin. In the flickering light of the match the moving parts behind the bones of what had once been his face were just visible. His teeth were bared--not like he had a choice anymore--and the dark sphere of his eye stood out against the metal of his skull.

Inside him the coolant pumped a little faster, and he looked away, covering his mouth with his hand.

"Doesn't matter," he tried to tell himself. "It's all you ever were. Just a machine pretending to be human."

All the same his shoulders shuddered with sobs and he paused in the corner to gag on nothing at all.

Every hour or so he laid himself down on the mattress and pretended to rest. If he were human his wounds would have killed him, but it still hurt like hell and focusing on repairs gave him time to think about anything else.

When he wasn't feigning humanity he fixed the door, which had hung crooked since he'd arrived, wiped down the furniture, flipped the mattress, anything to keep his mind occupied. It was slow work. Something was still wrong behind his right shoulder blade, precisely in the spot he couldn't reach, and it made raising that arm a struggle. He went through the desk and the debris laying around, hoping whoever had once owned the place had left behind a stimpack. No such luck.

What he did find was a small stack of books, yellowed and thick with dust bunnies but legible during daylight hours. He shifted through them-- _The Dyke and the Dybbuk_ , _The Haunting of Hill House_ , _The Talented Ribkins_ ; someone had good taste in books--and as the last light faded from the sky he took a slim green and pink collection of short stories and sank down onto the mattress. His good eye gave off just enough light to read by.

"When I got home from the supermarket," he read, "my husband was watching a boxing match on TV." He traced the lines with the hand that still worked properly, frowning slightly. "I'd planned on starting dinner right away, but the gears on my bicycle hadn't been working, and I was a little tired. Just a short break. Fifteen minutes."

He read as far as he could before his eyes seemed to short-circuit from the effort and then he set the book aside and tried to get comfortable. He braced his head against folded arms, the intact side down, but the tear across his nose jutted so far onto the other side that the screaming nerves kept brushing against his sleeve or his arm or the mattress.

He thought of his own home, the one he'd built for himself in Diamond City. He thought of Ellie. Part of him wanted to see her and tell her she was right, it always was a bad idea to head out alone. Most of him, though, imagined the horror on her face when she saw the mechanical parts where his face once was, and that killed him.

"Heh." He turned uncomfortably onto his back and looked up at the cobwebs in the rafters. "Like they'd let you in the front gate looking like this." The only answer was a distant roll of thunder. He shook his head. "Better be careful. You'll end up talking to yourself."

The rules of engagement popped up naturally. He would finish this book and the others, and then he would decide what to do; this gave him time to think it through instead of rushing into things on a whim. When he finished reading he would make up his mind whether or not he would venture back out into the wasteland, and from there whether he went deeper into the radiation or back towards civilization.

He saved the book for evening. Like any other scared, battered old man he got worked up with anxiety when the sun went down, and while sleep wasn't an option he needed something to focus on. During the day he did whatever he could find. It didn't stop his mind from wandering.

When he mocked the raider with the knife the leader, barely visible behind her massive suit of power armor, put a .44 slug through the side of his head. The force of it slammed his head back into the wall so hard he bit clean through his tongue, and for a moment he thought he was dead. No such luck. The bitter taste of coolant flooded his mouth and he spit as much as he could onto the floor.

"Tryna make me go deaf, Ivey?" the raider with the knife demanded, letting go of Nick's collar and rubbing his ear. _Go_ , he told himself, _run_ , but between the bullet embedded in his skull and whatever they had done to the circuits in his back he slid to the floor.

"Oh, quit whining." Ivey wedged the toe of her boot under his cheek and turned his head so that the wound was visible. "Got anything smart to say now, synth?"

He was panting, almost hyperventilating, and it made them laugh. "Thinks he's people," one of them teased, grabbing hold of his head and waggling it back and forth. He didn't resist. He thought of Ellie. Of home.

"Don't they always." Ivey put her heel on the hole freshly torn in his face and leaned her weight into it. The nerves the bullet had severed lit up like fireworks and he gave a wordless panicked moan. He couldn't even lift his arms to try and push her off. "What, that hurts? You got holes all over. Don't act sensitive on my account."

He still didn't know why they hadn't just killed him there. Wasn't that their M.O.? They stripped any kind of robot for scrap, turned the bodies into armor, salvaged the inner workings, tossed the rest in a scrap heap. Here, leaning against the cabin window, holding the coolant-stained sleeve of his shirt because that was the only way to move his arm very far, he wished they had.

He lay in bed a while after sunrise and worked through the pages of the book.

"No one batted an eyelid at me drinking raw eggs from a beer glass during breaks. Occasionally some kids would graffiti things like _WARNING smiling muscle woman will strangle you to death_ on the wall of the parking lot, but almost all the customers responded positively, once they got used to it."

He ran another diagnostic, and another, and another. There was nothing he could do to regrow the lost tissue. The raiders had marked him for life.

When the sun rose he didn't get up. He lay on his back, fingers tapping at the empty space where his nose had been. Nothing was left but the slender metal frame.

He read one story after another--finished _The Lonesome Bodybuilder_ , _Fitting Room_ , _Typhoon_. He opened his eyes to see raiders cut strips of flesh from his face. He cried. He lay on the mattress for days at a time. Even the thought of what had happened made him feel sick but there was no stopping the thoughts once they started.

The one with the knife took the first strip, a thick band from what was left of the skin of his cheek. He tried to fight back, turn his head, at least, but the power armor held him firm. Another one took the knife, sliced him forehead to chin and he struggled to stay silent even as the nerves threatened to pull him apart. Another slice, opposite direction, full length of his face. He tried to summon words--no, stop, please, don't--but all that came was a choked sob. One slice after another after another. When Ivey took her foot from his head he tried to pull back and didn't move.

"Gimme," Ivey said. She took the knife and cut the tiniest slice into the top of his forehead. He looked at her through the haze of pain and fear and her gloved fingers slipped easily under his skin. Her hand curled into a fist--it almost drew another cry from him--and then with all the strength of the power armor behind her she ripped the flesh from forehead to nose to chin.

He would jolt out of a low-power state to coolant pumping impossibly fast through him, and every time it happened his limbs felt heavier and his body more sore. He thought, if they'd stopped after the gunshot, or the knives, if they'd kept their mutilation to only part of his face... but they'd done what they had with purpose. They made sure to show him exactly how inhuman he really was, and then they made a point of marking him so that everyone else could see as well.

He read and re-read the same lines and none of them made an impact.

"I guessed my features had just been caught off guard that day. When I peered closer, they rushed to reassemble, as thought to say, _oh, shit_. But it was as if they couldn't remember their original placement, and as a result, the final impression was a little off-kilter."

He cried until he didn't have the strength to stay conscious, and when he recovered enough to be awake he cried some more.

There was something in the cabin with him.

He stirred a little, just enough to see the figure moving around near the door. It stood upright. It was no feral.

Raider? Institute synth? He couldn't find it in himself to fight back.

As he watched the figure moved closer, examining the table and the desk, and it seemed to overlook him before doing a double take.

"Oh shit!" it said, and then it drew a double-barrelled shotgun and cocked it in his direction.

He couldn't raise his head, but the voice was heart wrenchingly familiar. "John?"

The figure fumbled with the shotgun. "Who... Holy shit. Roux!"

"Ah..." The vault dweller too. He tried to turn his head away but couldn't so much as roll to his back. A second figure came in and the cabin lit up with the sickly green light of a pipboy. He blinked in the light but without the lid of his left eye it barely helped.

"What is it?" another voice asked, and then, softly: "Nick?"

A whimper escaped his throat. They could see him. They could see what had been done to him.

Roux's hand brushed the bones of his face. "Nick, what did they do to you?"

"Jeez, Nicky." Hancock stepped back and patted at his pockets. "You look like hell."

He trembled. He was crying. He didn't want them to look at him and it hurt that they did.

"Shit," Roux said softly. He stroked the tips of his fingers over the remaining skin on Nick's throat. "Oh my god."

He tried to give him a smile, for all the good it did either of them. "Did a number on me, huh?"

"Okay. Okay. Nick? Don't worry. I can fix this."

He can't. There is no fixing this. But the horror on his face wasn't the one he'd been expecting. He looked close to tears. And now Hancock came back, holding a syringe in his hands.

"You look like you could use some Med-X," he said.

"Yeah."

Roux helped him lie back, and Hancock stuck him with the Med-X syringe. Roux's huge gentle hand took hold of his. If he'd been human it would have brought tears to his eyes.

"'m sorry," he whispered.

Roux chuckled softly. "For what? This isn't your fault."

He didn't have it in him to explain.

"Just give the Med-X a minute to kick in and then we'll get you back to Diamond City. Okay?"

Like they would let him in the front gates like this...

"We'll get you back to Ellie and then we'll figure this out. But it's gonna be okay now. We've got you."

"Yeah," Hancock agreed. He took Nick's other hand in both of his. "And if any raiders try to touch you again, we'll stab 'em in the kidneys."

He couldn't help it. He cried and cried until he couldn't keep himself conscious, but neither Roux nor Hancock let him go alone. He fell into the darkness with the two of them still at his side.


End file.
